Utah Court of Appeals Upholds Dismissal of Child Sexual Abuse Accusations

An excerpt from the detailed discussion in State v. Murphy, decided Thursday by the Utah Court of Appeals (Judge David Mortensen, joined by Judges Gregory Orme and Ryan Harris):

… Murphy was charged with aggravated sexual abuse and sodomy on a child for incidents that had occurred many years prior involving the son (Jonathan) of one of Murphy’s former close friends (Mother). The magistrate, citing lack of evidence at a preliminary hearing to establish probable cause that Murphy committed the alleged abuse, declined to bind Murphy over for trial….

The allegations of abuse in this case came to light when Jonathan, who was fifteen years old at the time, was taken to an emergency room following a mental health episode. During a subsequent interview at the Children’s Justice Center (CJC), Jonathan described being abused when he was younger while being babysat for several hours at night when Mother worked an evening shift….

“A defendant may be bound over for trial only if the prosecution produces evidence sufficient to demonstrate probable cause that the charged crimes were committed.” This requirement “is aimed at ferreting out groundless and improvident prosecutions, relieving the accused from the substantial degradation and expense incident to a modern criminal trial when the charges against him are unwarranted or the evidence insufficient.” … Accordingly, a magistrate may deny bindover “when the evidence, considered under the totality of the circumstances, is wholly lacking and incapable of reasonable inference to prove some issue which supports the prosecution’s claim.” …

Here, the magistrate struggled to find sufficient evidence that Murphy was the one who perpetrated the abuse of Jonathan. In the magistrate’s words, “[T]he element in question is identity…. The evidence here is so wholly inconsistent as to the when and the who as to render the testimony regarding identity just simply incredible and as wholly lacking and incapable of supporting a reasonable inference that the defendant is the person that [Jonathan] is talking about.”

We agree that the magistrate acted within his limited discretion when he determined that the evidence presented did not “demonstrate probable cause that the charged crimes were committed” by Murphy….

First, Jonathan was unable to identify Murphy as the perpetrator of the abuse in court even though there were only two potential candidates present in court from whom to choose. Jonathan’s inability to identify Murphy as his babysitter—along with the lack of other evidence identifying Murphy as the babysitter during the time that the abuse occurred—does not provide probable cause to conclude that Murphy committed the charged crimes.

Second, Jonathan’s age at the time of the abuse does not support probable cause to believe that Murphy was the abuser. Jonathan first testified that he was about seven or eight when he stayed at the babysitter’s house, but when asked if he could “nail down” his age with greater precision, he said that he could not, and he agreed that he could not say if he was four, five, six, seven, or eight years old at the time of the abuse. Mother had testified that Murphy babysat Jonathan when he was about three or four years old. Thus, based on Mother’s testimony, there was only a speculative basis to conclude that Murphy was the babysitter during the period of time Jonathan said the abuse happened. Indeed, if Jonathan was to be believed that the abuse happened consistently with his original testimony—when he was seven or eight—then Murphy is actually excluded.

Third, the time of day Jonathan claimed the abuse occurred excludes Murphy as the babysitter who committed the abuse. Jonathan testified that the abuse occurred at night. Mother testified that Murphy babysat Jonathan in the mornings. If Murphy’s babysitting services were limited to the morning hours as Mother testified, he could not have been the person who committed the abuse under Jonathan’s version of the events.

Fourth, the contrasting and inconsistent testimony of Jonathan and Mother about the length of time Jonathan spent with the babysitter excluded Murphy as the offender. The magistrate correctly concluded that there was a significant difference “between being babysat for maybe an hour and six or seven hours.” The abusive babysitter Jonathan described cannot have been Murphy since—as Mother testified—Murphy did not supervise Jonathan for so many hours at a stretch.

Fifth, the circumstances of the babysitting did not indicate that Murphy was the abuser. Jonathan said that the babysitter who abused him did so during the hours he spent at the babysitter’s house while Mother worked at night. In contrast, Mother testified that Murphy babysat Jonathan for about an hour after Murphy would pick them up from her residence and drive her to the TRAX station, after which Murphy would drop Jonathan off at daycare. If the accounts given by Jonathan and Mother are both credited, Murphy cannot have been the perpetrator because the role he played does not align with that of the abuser Jonathan described….

Even when the magistrate fully credited the testimony provided by both Jonathan and Mother and viewed that evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, the State failed to meet its burden…. To be clear, this matter did not involve choosing among competing credible evidence, which is not allowed at bindover. Rather, the magistrate was faced with mutually exclusive evidence that was “not capable of supporting a reasonable belief” that Murphy was the babysitter who sexually abused Jonathan.

For Murphy to have been bound over on the evidence the State produced, the magistrate would have been required to rely on unreasonable inferences moored in unacceptable speculation…. Since neither Mother nor Jonathan provided sufficient evidence to identify Murphy as the individual who committed the abuse, the State failed to satisfy its burden of producing reasonably believable, non‐speculative evidence to support probable cause to believe that Murphy was the abuser….

Freyja Johnson and Hannah Leavitt‐Howell represent defendant.